Lance Turner, whose entire career in journalism has been at Arkansas Business — first as assistant editor, then 20-plus years as online editor and, since August 2021, as editor overseeing news operations — will leave the publication in January to take a position at Little Rock's Ghidotti Communications firm.
"I was hired right out of college; I graduated from Arkansas State University in May of 1999, got hired at the end of that school year, took two weeks off and then came to work at Arkansas Business as a reporter, and I've been here ever since," he said in an interview. "I've really enjoyed it and have loved working here, loved this company, loved the people.
"But as you do when you have a career that long, you do look around and wonder sometimes if there's something else out there or something else that you can do. I've investigated those possibilities here and there over the years, but I finally just found an opportunity that I thought would be good, which is this one. And decided, I'm 47, none of us are getting younger, and if you're going to try to see if you can do other things and develop other skills, you've got to get to work doing it."
Ghidotti focuses on strategic content, growing business reach and works to achieve defined key performance indicator metrics. Turner will work on client messaging and services.
"I think there are going to be things that I do every day that translate well to what I'll do over there, which is writing, editing, storytelling, information-gathering," he said.
Gwen Moritz, who edited Arkansas Business from 1999 to 2021, will serve as interim editor until Turner's successor is named.
Parlaying between reporting, marketing and public relations has a long history in both industries, but the flow has increasingly gone from journalism into communications as the publishing industry has seen cascading economic issues in the digital age and shed tens of thousands of jobs.
Turner, however, ascribed his transition to a desire for a second act in his career.
"I'm not concerned with the business of the Arkansas Business Publishing Group. We've got a good strategy, and we've got a really good team over here," he said. "For me, it's been that I've done this a long time, and I just wanted to see if I could do anything else, learn some new skills, and I just happened to have an opportunity with a person who I've known for 20 years."
Reached for comment, firm founder and CEO Natalie Ghidotti said, "I'm excited for Lance to make this career move and I'm honored he is doing it with us. His knowledge of Arkansas' business community and economy will be incredibly valuable to our clients looking to grown and gain more traction in the marketplace."
As with many Generation X cub reporters in the 1990s, Arkansas Business had Turner reporting on the internet from the time he began working at the company. In hindsight, he said the economic effects of the internet have been the prevailing undertone of his 24 years in business journalism.
The dot-com bubble burst in 2000, but Turner became online editor at the close of that year as he sensed the internet would have continuing influence notwithstanding the recession that stock market crash heralded.
"It's subsumed so many things. There's been good things about it, and then there's been bad things about it. Certainly it has wreaked havoc in journalism. But that's been the big force that I've observed in 24 years of this, the internet and all that it's done to every industry you can think of," he said.
Through his career, Turner, as an editor, has enjoyed working with Arkansas Business reporters get their stories out, from breaking news, to polishing pieces up, to harmonizing the publication's content.
"That to me has been the greatest joy, helping Mark Friedman get a really good story out, or getting a really good story about health care out there. That's always been where I've enjoyed stuff the most," Turner said.